As an author, sitting is an unfortunate by-product of the profession. When I first began my writing career, I confess that I spent too much time at my desk, desperately typing, revising and editing, so much so that I ended up in the emergency room with a pinched nerve in my back. I’ve had three children and I have never experienced something so painful in my life. Even now, as I write about it, I cringe at the memory!

Needless to say, after recovering from that ordeal, I made definite changes to my writing routine. By doing so, it has not only improved me physically, but also kicked up my mental processes, making writing that much easier. My muse is so much happier and she shows it by letting the ideas flow!

There are five things that I worked into my writing routine that helped me improve the way I work.

Please take these tips and mold them to your needs. Good health is important.

As authors, we begin behind the eight-ball because we sit for such a large portion of our day.

Without further ado, here they are:

Drink plenty of water. It’s easy to slurp down coffee and soda and juice while sitting at the computer. The sugar and caffeine give us a quick rush of energy and keep us focused on the task at hand. However, overloading on such drinks can cause a late day crash, jitters, and dehydration. I have acquired a cute little water bottle and fill it with ice water with a touch of lemon juice. Mind you, I do not skip my morning coffee, and will go for a refill if the urge strikes me. Bu if I am going to have the coffee, I’ll make a conscious effort to finish the water bottle by noon, then go back for a refill on that too. Sipping water also keeps me from snacking too much. The addition of the lemon gives the boring water a spiffy taste and has the small benefit of Vitamin C.

Take a Break – Try not to become so focused on your writing that you don’t get up from the computer because you don’t want to “break the spell”. Create a break schedule. Set a timer for fifty, thirty or twenty minutes, then working on your writing and ONLY your writing. No checking social media or paring down your inbox. When the timer goes off, get up. Walk around, check the mail, do yoga stretches – anything but sit. This gives your body a break from sitting in a fixed position and gets the blood flowing to your brain. Don’t skip the break, as tempting as it may be to do so.

Exercise – Yes, you’ve heard it many times before. Your brain feeds on the oxygen-rich blood circulated by the heart. Before I sit down at the keyboard with my fragrant cup of coffee, I complete a brisk 15-20 minute walk that gets my blood pumping and my brain receptive for the muse. During these walks, I am often able to work out any issues that I might be having in my story. Getting away from the keyboard and out into the fresh air helps immensely.I also enjoy yoga. It’s calm, low-impact and I don’t have to get too dressed up for it! When the weather is poor or I simply don’t feel like going outside, ten to fifteen minutes of yoga poses can serve the same purpose.

Get Enough Sleep – Most of us wouldn’t stay up half the night and try to function at the job on four or five hours of sleep, would we? If you write full time like me, your writing is your job. Treat it like one. Get enough rest the night before. A full night’s sleep increases your mental sharpness, emotional balance, and creativity. Sitting in front of your computer screen bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed can only lead to frustration and writer’s block. It’s all about putting yourself in the most optimum frame of mind possible.

Pay attention to Posture – Nothing will fatigue you more than terrible posture. We’ve all done it: shoulders hunched, wrists smashed against the laptop and feet in odd positions. There’s no problem in doing it, the problem is staying that way. Check your posture: are your shoulders back, feet flat on the floor and your wrists relaxed? Hunching over can put a great strain on the neck, as well as the shoulders and forearms. My weakness is that I lean to the right side, putting too much pressure on my right arm. About fifteen minutes of that and I have to shake it back awake! Stay cognizant of how you sit.

So there you have it, my magical formula for staying alert and healthy while pounding out the word count. While I don’t always do every single thing on this list, I strive to ensure that I’m in the best mind frame possible when I sit down at the computer. It’s not easy sticking to this routine, and I have been guilty of hunching over the computer for an hour straight. However, as long as that remains an anomaly and not a regular practice, I’m looking forward to many happy, healthy years as an author with a happy, healthy, giving muse and no more ER visits!

Hello again! So glad to see y’all along with me for the ride Halloween blogging, or, as I call it……BLOGTOBERFEST……..

Today’s recipe is not a mocktail, but a straight up liquor fest. It was a choice between this and chocolate martinis. I chose this because it looks like fruit punch. (What, me drinking? Nah, this is fruit punch.) And I love sangria.

Preparation:

Pour wine in the pitcher and squeeze the juice wedges from the lemon and orange into the wine. Toss in the fruit wedges (leaving out seeds if possible) and add sugar and brandy. Chill overnight. Add ginger ale or club soda just before serving.

If you’d like to serve right away, use chilled red wine and serve over lots of ice.

Synopsis: A popular college student graciously accepts a social outcast’s online friend request, but soon finds herself fighting a demonic presence that wants to make her lonely by killing her closest friends.

Genre: Horror

Opinion:

Let’s face it, most of us live online these days, especially those under 30. Between online dating and online classes, people find themselves either at the computer or on their cell phones. People are judged by the number of friends they have on social media or the number of likes they have on a post. Some people pay good money to acquire followers and/or garner even more interest in their online musings.

Okay, you might be saying, it’s a movie review, Dahlia, get to the damn point. All right then. I say all that to say is when we see a post with no likes or a person with a low number of “friends” or “followers”, we assume that means low popularity. And of course, someone with low popularity online is to be pitied and “felt sorry for”

And now we come to the crux of this movie. A popular college student receives a friend request from a girl who doesn’t have any friends. Feeling sorry for her, she “friends” her. The relationship then degenerated into a sort of stalker/stalkee symbiosis, with the popular college student trying to get away from the cloying, smothering of her new “friend”.

After cutting off the friendship, the girl commits suicide and posts the video on the popular girl’s social media page. This leads to her losing online friends and then DUN DUN DUN, she begins losing friends in real life….TO MURDER MOST FOUL.

Anyhoo, the rest of the movie invovles her tracking down and trying to eliminate the girl’s ghost, who is apparently causing all the trouble. Will she succeed? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

All in all, it wasn’t the best horror movie I’ve seen, but I thought the premise was interesting. It is well-acted and well-shot with some disturbing imagery, but I must say the movie does contain an almost paint by the numbers list of horror cliches, including jump scares with stinger chords. Despite these flaws, it’s moderately intriguing and is a good movie to have on in the background.

In the US, a child goes missing every 40 seconds. You never think it will happen to you. Until it does. Alone and scared, Karla Dyson (Halle Berry) is unwilling to leave the fate of her son’s life in someone else’s hands. When she catches a glimpse of the abductors speeding away, she decides to fight back. In a heart pounding race against time, Karla begins a high speed pursuit and will stop at nothing to save her son’s life. Written by https://teaser-trailer.com

Remember that time you stepped off to the side in the store to take a kind of important call and you got so engrossed you took your eyes of your child for more than a couple of minutes? Yep. That’ was Halle Berry’s mistake in Kidnap. But boy, does she make up for it, if I may say, in spades.

Berry plays single mother Karla Dyson, who’s set up in the movie is done quite well. She works at a diner in a thankless waitress job, as demonstrated by one snooty patron, and is looking forward to a well deserved break at an amusement park with her son, Frankie. But what should be an idyllic afternoon between mother and son turns into the worst of nightmares, as Frankie is spirited away under his mother’s nose and she’s helpless to stop it.

The film is non-stop action. The moment Frankie is stuffed into that car, Halle Berry goes full tiger mom mode. Without stopping to call the police, she makes an attempt at stopping the kidnapping right away and chases the villain’s car in her minivan. This begins a cat-and-mouse game, which keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire movie.

The story is told from Halle’s point of view and that’s all the insight we need. In such an impossible situation, she knows the police will move too slowly and that it’s up to her to save her son. She digs deep down and finds the strength to chase her son and his kidnappers all the way into the Louisiana countryside.

Halle carries most of the movie, both in talking to herself and screaming in frustration at the kidnappers. As a mother, I felt her pain every step of the way. Not many people want to see a child in danger or hurt, and it was harrowing to see Halle’s near misses at getting Frankie back. Though the villain remains unseen for most of the movie, just the fact they’ve kidnapped a kid launches them into full-on villain status. There are no gray areas in this movie, and Halle is justified in the things she does.

It’s also refreshing to see a woman of color in a lead role in a thriller. Instead of playing the “girlfriend” or the “woman who sits home and frets”, she takes an active role in reclaiming her child. Digging deep for the reserves of power and ingenuity within her, there’s nothing she won’t do to get him back. I simply love how she goes all out in pursuit. No minivan ever has seen such action!!

For steady movie goers – you won’t see anything new in this movie. However, Halle puts a fresh spin on the “child in peril” movie and seriously owns some of the scenes in it. Is it a great movie? Not at all, but it is entertaining, and isn’t that what we go to the movies for?

All in all an effective thriller with great car chases and a heroine you can root for.

So, you call yourself a horror movie fan? Well, even as a middle of the road fan, meaning I won’t watch them at night, and if something is too gory or too much, I will turn it off to preserve my sanity. Given that, I’ve seen a lot of scary movies, but even I was surprised to find out some were remakes. Let’s take a look, beyond the obvious.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Yep, this sister vs sister thriller/horror was remade in 1991 starring real life sisters Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave. John Glover plays the part, I think, that Victor Buono played in the original. I’ve seen it, I’ve noted it, I’ve blanked it out. Nuff said. Here’s the trailer.

[wpdevart_youtube]https://youtu.be/ASNWw6yFIb8[/wpdevart_youtube]

The Crazies

Timothy Olyphant, who I will always forever see as sexy salesman Danny Cordray on The Office, and Radha Mitchell do a great job in this remake of the 1973 classic. I don’t mind telling you, the trailer scared me. The image of people enjoying a nice day at a baseball game as a huge, zombie-like dude marches across the field carrying a bloody weapon….that’s horror, where the ordinary go so wrong, so fast. I haven’t seen the original, so I’m not sure how it measures up, but I can say it sure scared me.

Last House on the Left

As an exercise in 70s horror, I watched this. It was an awful experience because the movie was so good at being awful. The feeling of dread, of hopelessness and fear exudes from the screen after the two fun-loving girls meet up with that terrible crew. Once seen, it is not an experience I’d want to repeat, because the movie did so well at making its audience feel terrible. I won’t watch the remake.

The Fly

David Cronenberg is a body horror master. In The Fly, he lets it all hang out. Ugh. I’ve seen both, but the remake is more stomach turning, and probably realistic than the original. Both movies, however, do have good points.

The Blob

Yes, Steve McQueen was dreamy as a 40 year old high school student, but let’s be real. The original Blob depended more on suspense than gross out scenes. In the remake, it was a disgusting thrill to see the dude sucked down the drain by the blob. The telephone booth scene was also a good scare. Again, with what they had to work with, the original Blob was pretty good, but the remake’s special effects made a scary story much better.\